


Deep in My Bones, Straight From Inside

by HSavinien



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, (minor) - Freeform, Blood, Emetophobia, Food, Future Fic, Gen, Illnesses, New immortals, Outer Space, Post-Canon, Reactor Meltdown, Refugees, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: A mining colony on a moon has had a nuclear disaster and the team is there to help.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker & Nile Freeman & Joe & Nicky & Quynh | Noriko & Original Character(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 31





	Deep in My Bones, Straight From Inside

Niklo expected it to feel like fire, like a sunburn eating at his skin, but it’s only a roiling nausea, weakness, dizziness overtaking him in waves as he stumbles out of the darkness of the tunnel to the waiting aid shuttle, another small body slung across his shoulders. Too light, too frail. The radiation suit they gave him is gone, pieces wrapped around two of the first ones he found, closest to the pulsing sickness of the core. He took off the helmet a few times to vomit, until it was too much trouble to put it back on. He will manage. It will not even kill him before he heals; it is too slow a death to touch them. The hands that help slide the person from his shoulders are gentle and he accepts a quick gulp of water before he turns back for the next.

Ca took to flying like a bird. Her collection of pilot’s licenses (actual licenses, thank you) stretches back for centuries now, and she was the first into the shuttle when the alert came. She flies a loop that twists and adjusts to the rotation of the moon, swoops low to the ground to Niklo to gather more people, then up to the sky, to the ship, to Andromache, to deliver them to safety and the care of her other siblings. The crew is careful, but she has to slip the comms into her ears and crank the volume of Andromache’s music to block the sound of weeping like water rushing behind her. It hurts to be so sensitive to their pain, but she would not trade it for the alternative. She soars, bearing the frightened and hurt under her wings.

Yusa bit his tongue and the iron taste of blood still lingers in his mouth hours later, though it healed instantly. The miners and their families are a terrified roil of humanity and he tends to them as best he can, shepherding everyone through lukewarm showers for decontamination. Yusa manages a smile when a child stomps her foot, demanding “The Ducky Song” and her parents, laughing through their tears, sing it to her as they soap her down and rinse her. Two other kids take up the tune, and then a teen starts humming it, looking embarrassed. Yusa joins in as soon as he gets the words straight. Soon, three dozen people are humming or singing or bobbing their heads to a bath song as they wash, and terror has trickled away into exhaustion.

Batchi charmed several of the grands-parents into helping them throw together a meal with their supplies and the scraps people had with them when they fled, cozening grumpy Loche into sharing the kitchen to sacrifice speed for volume and comfort. He passes out spiced rice and a porridge of chopped onion and apple and grains and lentils, sweet and savory at once. One of the men, slumped in a corner, has hands shaking too badly to eat. Batchi sits beside him and lets him lean into his side, brace against him like he’s a wall in a gale. He subsides into shudders after a few minutes, and Batchi passes him his bowl and stays with him. The young ones will manage without him for a moment.

Nyla’s head has been playing a song long lost to time since they learned of the disaster. She catches herself drumming her fingers on her tablet as Ca’s shuttle pings the docking bay - another load of people safe. She smiles into the video feed like the sun, bright and hot and brutal, and the company’s representative falters. “The reactor core you replaced last year,” she repeats gently. “The new safety measures which locked out any of the residents from accessing the controls when it started throwing out warnings.”  _ I’m waking up to ash and dust, _ her brain sings. “I’m forwarding the list of supplies that you will send. Medical, decontamination, water, and food first. The rest can wait a few days, if that’s easier.” They  _ will _ send it. The alternative, of course, is that her team will come and take it, which will be much more expensive to them.

Andromache watched them welcome their new siblings, watched them build a quiet legacy - theirs and hers - as the world expanded beyond Earth and she would ache with pride if “ache” meant anything anymore. They pull the miners free of their poisoned moon and she counts the people as they make it in, tracing them from Niklo, to Ca, to Yusa, to Batchi, with Nyla watching over them and fighting for them. The youngest of their team - Fight-despair, Anbahua, and Loche - step up to their places in medical, at the gun controls, and in the kitchen, mending and guarding and nourishing. Nyla’s team is as bright as the stars surrounding them and their care warms their new guests as much as Andromache’s environmental settings. Selfishness and greed may be eternal, but their nemeses are too. She adjusts her bearing, just a little, to make Ca’s next docking easier. Andromache rarely imagined herself as a sailor, but she fancies she does well as a ship, ferrying her warriors across the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Andy's their spaceship. Ca, Quynh's new name, means "eldest."


End file.
